Authors

James R. Koterski

James R. Koterski was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. He holds a Ph.D. degree in organic chemistry from the University of Iowa. Following graduate school, he joined the DuPont Company where he held a number of management positions in manufacturing, marketing and research and development.

In retirement, he has continued to pursue his interests in early Americana. Throughout this quest to learn more about the Wilmington potter, William Hare, and others, he frequently recalls his introduction to Arthur James’ book on Chester County, Pennsylvania, Potters by Andy Scari, known locally as The Village Peddler.

That event served to catalyze an adventure into the lives and pursuits of those who worked and fired clay in early Delaware.

The journey has also now expanded into a search for the potters and potteries of Cecil County, Maryland.

Jim is married to Sue and they have three daughters and two grandsons.

Quote of the day

There are books...which take rank in your life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

Joseph Brodsky

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.

James Russell Lowell

There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing poetry.

Emily Dickinson

The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.

Samuel Butler

I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things.

George Gissing

The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb.

Umberto Eco

A book is a part of life, a manifestation of life, just as much as a tree or a horse or a star. It obeys its own rhythms, its own laws, whether it be a novel, a play, or a diary. The deep, hidden rhythm of life is always there-that of the pulse, the heart beat.

Henry Miller

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

Thomas Jefferson

A book is like a man-clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.